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Personally I disagree with a lot of your post, but this was the biggest one I disagreed with. There are lots of new players playing Planetside each day, and are learning how to play. The game is already really hard to learn, and having a new player blow up on a vehicle pad is a quick way to getting them to uninstall. Without new players, the game dies.

Call it hand holding or what have you, being able to place mines on the vehicle pad is one of the cheapest things you could do and added very little to the game.

It's not something that I worry over particularly although I would agree. The game is hard for new players. I have some of friends who were really good ps1 players and found it hard to get into ps2. Actually a lot of my old ps1 friends and colleagues gave ps2 a try and gave up pretty quick.

Anyway, if someone says 'it's like this to make it easy for new players' I'll generally be supportive.

It's not something that I worry over particularly although I would agree. The game is hard for new players. I have some of friends who were really good ps1 players and found it hard to get into ps2. Actually a lot of my old ps1 friends and colleagues gave ps2 a try and gave up pretty quick.

Anyway, if someone says 'it's like this to make it easy for new players' I'll generally be supportive.

It can't be done now, but I personally think they should split the game into two player types: Grunts, and Elites.

Using Titanfall as a model, you essentially have the Grunt/Pilot dynamic. Grunts play to jump between zergs and have less clutter to deal with, meanwhile Elites are the players playing for tactics, working in outfits and determining the shape of engagements.

It can't be done now, but I personally think they should split the game into two player types: Grunts, and Elites.

Using Titanfall as a model, you essentially have the Grunt/Pilot dynamic. Grunts play to jump between zergs and have less clutter to deal with, meanwhile Elites are the players playing for tactics, working in outfits and determining the shape of engagements.

Personally I disagree with a lot of your post, but this was the biggest one I disagreed with. There are lots of new players playing Planetside each day, and are learning how to play. The game is already really hard to learn, and having a new player blow up on a vehicle pad is a quick way to getting them to uninstall. Without new players, the game dies.

Call it hand holding or what have you, being able to place mines on the vehicle pad is one of the cheapest things you could do and added very little to the game.

I don't recall using the term holding hands, nor it's in that spirit lol.

Think of another game, say, basketball. A referee would draw random circles on the ground where offense can't step on. After watching the offense dance around like clown just to get off a shot, the ball changes hands and now it's the other team to do it on the other side.

Now, would I call that 'holding hands'? Would you call it holding hands? My guess, no. What I would call it is gameplay degradation, increased predictability, messed up flow, unnecessary rules and overall an overreach by the officials.

Now, back to Planetside 2. The No Deploy Zone does the same. Anything and everything that can happen when a basketball player steps on the circle will NEVER happen because it is prohibited. Anything and everything that can happen when a Sunderer parks in that zone will never happen because it is prohibited.

So, If I drive a Sunderer in a risky desperation move to park and nail it on a side of a wall, under fire inside NDZ will never happen. And any and all chain of events happening as a result will never happen EVER! That's my point about reducing gameplay variety and unpredictability.

It's a simple rule of reciprocity. Defenders are allowed to park Sundies, hence offense should be allowed to park. Defenders use shotguns, offense is allowed shotguns, etc etc.

Secondly, about the mines on the vehicle pad (and I understand how important the newbies are). I believe there are far worse things in PS2 than that and most of them involve gameplay balance. It's something we've been warning the Devs since the beginning. Example: (Dec. 17, 2012http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...000#post868000)

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Faction balance first before promotions.

Gameplay balance first before promotions.

They may lure in alot of new players but all these imbalances will simply enfuriate them.

Faction balance - Overpowered Vanu camps Esamir so they can spam overpowered Magriders. NC and TR leaves for Indar. whoever is losing that fight goes to Amerish. So you got a 3 different faction concentrated on 3 different continents. Then, all 3 factions will switch continents for easy capping on empty bases, rinse and repeat.

Gameplay balance - Air units need to be nerfed or be more expensive. I've never used air units before because I prefer infantry, but these units get too much kills and advantage.

Small/Medium base spawn rooms needs retooling to allow infantry to get out and not get farmed by air or mechanized units as soon as they step out. Give them 3 double-width doors. Open up the roof with shields so players shoot the hoovering aircraft right above the room while their nose is pointing just outside the door.

They can grab all the players they can with these promos but they will simply leave once they realise the game balance is out of whack.

I think it is exaggerated how these mines affect newbie experience. Most of the vehicle pads are located about 5 feet from the console. I assume most players have use of at least one eye. And it's no different that laying AI mines on stairs or doorways.

Instead newbies are leaving because of gameplay imbalances: The Zoes, the lolpods, the Harassers, the Prowler HEs of yesterdays etc etc. Newbies are also leaving because the Developer solutions eschew the basic gameplay, such as allowing Sunderer spawn to wipe easily, coming from the buffed Liberators and is the main reason why stopped logging on (http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=58093).

But, I'll give an example of a current imbalance that the Devs are trying to solve heavy-handedly (same way as the NDZ, vehicle pad, jump pad solutions). It's Sniperside. Before Sniperside, Snipers are this way:

Ranged advantage + low Detection advantage (stealth) + Can't 1-hit

After much circle-jerking at the official forum, the Developers decide to change Sniper abilities. And despite warnings of how they are being gamed (read, I'm referring to Sniper posts at the official forum btw: http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...199#post948199 )

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]

...SNIP...

Nanoweave and Snipers

- I'll wait for the actual post, but these Snipers complaining about nanoweave want low risk/high reward situations. Snipers are already kill-streakers. The current system is fine. All these guys do is deploy spam until they get to a high cliff, high mountain, high building, top of tower, top of antenna, top of tree, then snipe with impunity with very low risk and high rewards. And they still want some more?

They don't need to fix what's not broken. All these buffs to Vulcan, HE etc. weren't necessary at all in the first place. All they did was break stuff for months. Just go to any Youtube videos of Snipers killing nonstop and you'll see there's nothing to fix.

Hence, this crazy, advantage has been used to farm newbies. What's the Dev solution? Death Screen. In a similar vein as the NDZ and such, it encroaches unnecessarily on player gamespace. It's not player action that is telling where people are, but the Dev indirection action.

A better Sniper solution would be simple, well thought balance pass: Remove stealth ability from Snipers!

Finally, I reiterate that this is a philosophic battle whether the Devs should jump in or keep their hands off gameplay and leave player interactions to just the players. I still say that all the former does is make Planetside 2 fights less exciting and more bland and cumbersome.

I don't recall using the term holding hands, nor it's in that spirit lol.

Think of another game, say, basketball. A referee would draw random circles on the ground where offense can't step on. After watching the offense dance around like clown just to get off a shot, the ball changes hands and now it's the other team to do it on the other side.

Hockey for the longest time had something like this. It was called the goalie's crease. An opposing player wasn't allowed to score while in the crease. It made it so the goalie had a buffer zone of not being interfered with. The No Deploy Zone is also similar to a modern offsides. It prevents you from goal hanging, which is similar to placing a sunderer directly on the capture point.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

I think it is exaggerated how these mines affect newbie experience. Most of the vehicle pads are located about 5 feet from the console. I assume most players have use of at least one eye. And it's no different that laying AI mines on stairs or doorways.

Instead newbies are leaving because of gameplay imbalances:

Exaggerated or not, it adds very little to the game vs the amount of cheap and cheese for players who like to mine the pads. A variety of cheese is still cheese.

The reason most noobs left was because of performance until OMFG. After that, it's usually one of these: not being able to find a fight, or dying a lot. Some players have no idea how they're dying and the feedback the game gave was very sparse and difficult to understand. That's one of the reasons we added the killcam. Personally, I wanted to go further with the killcam, but what we have is still pretty good.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Finally, I reiterate that this is a philosophic battle whether the Devs should jump in or keep their hands off gameplay and leave player interactions to just the players.

There's no "we keep hands off gameplay." Everything we do has some hands on or design direction. For the best games out there, it's really hard to notice the designer's hand in the game, because it all flows so smoothly. There are some rough edges where you can see the designer's hand, but I don't agree with your solutions to fix that roughness.

Hockey for the longest time had something like this. It was called the goalie's crease. An opposing player wasn't allowed to score while in the crease. It made it so the goalie had a buffer zone of not being interfered with. The No Deploy Zone is also similar to a modern offsides. It prevents you from goal hanging, which is similar to placing a sunderer directly on the capture point.

Exaggerated or not, it adds very little to the game vs the amount of cheap and cheese for players who like to mine the pads. A variety of cheese is still cheese.

The reason most noobs left was because of performance until OMFG. After that, it's usually one of these: not being able to find a fight, or dying a lot. Some players have no idea how they're dying and the feedback the game gave was very sparse and difficult to understand. That's one of the reasons we added the killcam. Personally, I wanted to go further with the killcam, but what we have is still pretty good.

There's no "we keep hands off gameplay." Everything we do has some hands on or design direction. For the best games out there, it's really hard to notice the designer's hand in the game, because it all flows so smoothly. There are some rough edges where you can see the designer's hand, but I don't agree with your solutions to fix that roughness.

My apologies if I offend, but I think this is exactly the kind of development mind-set that is ruining this game. I completely disagree with you and don't think you understand the very core-mechanics of what makes Planetside tick.

It's about giving us a big free and open world, a bunch of cool weapons to blow shit up with, and letting us go. You want to hold our hand. No thanks. I understand this is not always a nub-friendly environment, and may not live up to your profit-making expectations. Continue to sell-out as much as you need to. In the mean-time real gamers will go find the games on the cutting-edge, just like we did with Planetside 1.

My apologies if I offend, but I think this is exactly the kind of development mind-set that is ruining this game. I completely disagree with you and don't think you understand the very core-mechanics of what makes Planetside tick.

It's about giving us a big free and open world, a bunch of cool weapons to blow shit up with, and letting us go. You want to hold our hand. No thanks. I understand this is not always a nub-friendly environment, and may not live up to your profit-making expectations. Continue to sell-out as much as you need to. In the mean-time real gamers will go find the games on the cutting-edge, just like we did with Planetside 1.

And I have to disagree with you. I think the mindset of keeping newbies interested in the game is more important than anything else. Players are the content of this game. You can all add all the cool weapons to blow shit up, all the freedom in the world to do whatever you want and none of it will matter if the game doesn't have the player base to support it. I don't know about you but this 'real-gamer' is staying right here with a game he loves. You're welcome to go play call of battlefield if that's your idea of a real game.

Offensive quips aside they have said from the beginning that this game would be like a bad battlefield clone and slowly get more and more planetside elements over the year. It's nice to get some features in the game that can keep everyone happy but imo I think more so than the newbies who the devs like to hold hands its the 'vets' who are influencing the game in a bad way. They're so set on 'This is how it was in PS1 and it worked. So surely it needs to be in PS2.' This has been hashed out countless times and theres a bunch of good arguments for and against that idea but at the end of the day Planetside 1 and Planetside 2 are 'not' the same game, quit trying to make them the same.

It will be as soon as they go live on the PS4. Bifurcate user base, bifurcate dev programs with bifurcate budgets, et cetera.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]it can't be half-measureslike what they've done with the No-Deploy Zone, Amp Station/Tech Tunnels, WDS Preseasons, Amerish Lattice etc. A lot of these ideas are underdeveloped, unstructured, incomplete or just plain misguided.

Every one of those (except WDS) is a kludge deriving from shitty base design. Every. Single. ONE.

I am looking forward to actually being able to capture and hold something -- to have that old sensation of YAY! WE WON!!!1!!11, if only for a day -- and perhaps engage in some one-on-one empire versus empire slugfests rather than the tired three-way shoving contest. I find myself utterly cynical as to how it will be implemented.

I am also going to point out once again that PS2 still has no user's guide. That is just pure fucking insanity. You want to know why new users drop out at appalling rates? That's why.

__________________
No XP for capping empty bases -- end the ghost-zerg! 12-hour cooldown timers on empire swaps -- death to the 4th Empire!

My apologies if I offend, but I think this is exactly the kind of development mind-set that is ruining this game. I completely disagree with you and don't think you understand the very core-mechanics of what makes Planetside tick.

It's about giving us a big free and open world, a bunch of cool weapons to blow shit up with, and letting us go. You want to hold our hand. No thanks. I understand this is not always a nub-friendly environment, and may not live up to your profit-making expectations. Continue to sell-out as much as you need to. In the mean-time real gamers will go find the games on the cutting-edge, just like we did with Planetside 1.

Being able to get new players into the game (even the fodder types) and retaining them is extremely important to players.

What we lacked in PS1 for a long time (till the "tutorial missions") was a proper introduction design. I feel PS2 shouldn't have launched life without one.

In part, I agree with you that DURING THE GAME, the player doesn't need to be held hands. Think like mines on vehicle pads... Eh. They're the most logical spot to place them, are they not? So just make sure that when a player pulls a vehicle, he has a good oversight from the console on the vehicle pad: any blowing up is then your own fault. Of course, in PS2, the consoles are sometimes inside a room, or way above with the vehicle pads 50+m away. In some cases, we even had vehicle pads you could use as an enemy, with an enemy SHIELD in front of it (!). You know, at that base people refered to as the Star Ship Troopers fort.

But the problem is that players should be taught valuable skills before entering the game. They should understand the map, but not just the icons, what it means, strategically. I really liked that PS1 eventually had all these pop ups and exclamation marks for new characters, to make it easy to draw attention to things and explain it.

But even knowing the equipment or consoles is not enough - even if a must - doesn't suffice. The VR-Room is important (and IMO, players should probably start here, so they know of its existance and also, since it's an environment where people can ask questions and get an answer).

Currently I think the new player is not taught some of the more important stuff. One of the most important things is teaching the player to communicate with others. And be very clear and predictable in how and when these chat commands work (influence of zones, etc.)

The most important thing however, is teaching a player about situational awareness. Now, what this dev is on about, is teaching them while playing, after they got killed. Possibly, it might be more interesting to teach them off-line on where you could expect what kind of danger from. To teach them just how much danger there is. And that you should always be aware that any form of tunnelvision leads to being killed by something else from the side, above or behind.

I think it's more important to teach them how to move through terrain infested by hundreds of people (and how to observe the fight before making a move), than teach them to burst fire. Teaching them what information they need, where they can find it or how they can obtain it. Or at least, how they can reocgnise it and then how to use that information.

For instance, how to deal with camped and defending situations (where to check for enemies, what units to prioritise (those camping close, medics, spawn vehicles, etc), last resort: respawn elsewhere). Also teaching them that the most straightforward route may not be the most succesful route. Teach them to flank. Teach them to think about what their opponents will be trying to do and how.

This can be done with simulaitons, or even a paused scene from an actual player assault on a base, where in different moments different situations are recorded and frozen for the new player to learn from (both good things and mistakes, like running into a firing squad time and again instead of coming up with a different approach).

Teach them to be creative with the tools they have. Teach them to prepare for the next fight by reading the map and noticing what is going on, so they learn how to make a choice on where to go, why and what they can expect in terms of enemies and friendlies turning up. If you want to take a base three lattice points down the road, what counter-actions can you expect from enemies? What equipment will they be able to bring and what kind of preventive measures could you take? Should you consider changing vehicle?

But above all... Teach them that most of this knowledge will come over the months you play. Teach them that getting better and mastering this is the ultimate challenge. Don't teach them that short term gain (kills, exp) is relevant. Teach them the long term objectives.

A lot of those things people learn from experience. And it is exactly that gap of experience that a lot of people have with those who already play (or are simply smarter and adapt quick) that prevents them from getting into a demanding PvP MMO like this game.

This could partially be done with a simulator against AI, it could be done with "(De)Briefing Tutorials" (tactical analysis of a player battle as described before).

But the problem with that all, is that it's an awful lot of work. Plus... I'm not impressed with the tactical analysis prowess I've seen that lead to the various base designs and camping in the first place, so I'm not sure I'd trust the dev team to provide this properly.

It would be good if tutorial videos could be submitted by players though and accessed from in game, sorted by category of gameplay and situations.

Of course we need to get new players into the game. Let's do that by making an amazing game that retains its veteran population with it's incredibly fun game-play. Build it and the nubs will come. Stop pandering to their every whim.

Any argument that has the phrase "real gamers" mentioned in it is not an argument worth considering.

I agree completely. So much so I made a flow chart.

Do you play video games? -> Yes -> You are a real gamer.

Originally Posted by Rivenshield

I am also going to point out once again that PS2 still has no user's guide. That is just pure fucking insanity. You want to know why new users drop out at appalling rates? That's why.

While it would be great to have a user's guide, most new players would never look at it.

Originally Posted by Illtempered

Of course we need to get new players into the game. Let's do that by making an amazing game that retains its veteran population with it's incredibly fun game-play. Build it and the nubs will come. Stop pandering to their every whim.

Every veteran started as a noob. And if veterans mop the floor with noobs, why would they stay?

Of course we need to get new players into the game. Let's do that by making an amazing game that retains its veteran population with it's incredibly fun game-play. Build it and the nubs will come. Stop pandering to their every whim.

Not necessarily true. EVE has incredible fun gameplay, for those that like it, yet has a very poor player retention rate. About half of the new players leave within the first month.

If you don't offer a really good new player experience then chances are many of them won't stick around, also taking into account how frustrating PS2 gameplay can be for them.

Slightly off topic but maybe relevant would be the return of the underground vpads with doors at the end (or shields if you can't do doors) these in ps were awesome and we had alot of great infantry fights down them as another access point like the back doors and main doors.

As for the noob vs vet argument we have to remember with out noobs the game would die quickly because the vets would start to leave because pops would be low and so making pops lower so without new players and giving them some hand holding to an extent if it helps make them into a long term player then it's sacrifice we should make.
It's not like we can't drop mines a little bit away from the pad. And as has been said they are such a cheap kill and very annoying to loose your sundie as you spawn it wasting your resources. I don't mind dieing to a tank or even c4 but a mine on a vpad is just lame in my eyes.

As for contacting locking I'm all for it as long as hossin is in place then we can start a simplified version adding battle islands and more conts as time goes on. But hossin has been sat on test for what must be a year and that's ridiculous, just release it now and get searhus out ASAP too. We need more continents not guns.